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Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

hey.paris

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Re: Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

#31

Post by sho »

mhammerc wrote: post #28
sho wrote: post #23

Wow. This is a cautionary tale. I don't think I'd be as devastated as this poor chap, but as it grew I realize I've allowed my iCloud photo library to become a single copy. How are people handling this these days? If i wanted to ensure a full backup of everything on my iCloud to a NAS, what's the best way these days? Seems like they make it difficult by design..

I run Arq Backup automatically in the background. It copy Photos, iCloud files and my mails once every days to S3 with incremental backups. It requires to have a full copy locally. Works great! It is not hard to configure once, with the proper folders and settings.

> It requires to have a full copy locally.

yeah that's the thing. When my iPhotos library exceeded 1TB I lost the ability to store the full local copies. Since then, iCloud itself has been the sole source.

Looks like there's some decent, reasonably priced apps to handle this like https://apps.apple.com/us/app/parachute-backup/id6748614170?... (no affiliation)

Re: Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

#32

Post by x3sphere »

It's just insane that a gift card redemption can trigger this. What's the rationale? It would make more sense if they just locked the person out of redeeming gift cards or something, not the entire account.

But reading horror stories like this is is why I only use the very bare minimum of any of these cloud services. Keep local copies of everything. For developer accounts, I always create them under a separate email so they're not tied to my personal. At least it can minimize the damage somewhat.

It sucks that I have to take all these extra precautions though. It's definitely made me develop a do not trust any big corp mindset.

Re: Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

#33

Post by burnt-resistor »

pfooti wrote: post #6

I have had an apple id problem myself, for the past N years. Mine is an old mac.com account, which has my Gmail address as the backup email (and the primary one now that mac.com isn't doing email anymore). Because of this, I cannot sign up for a new account with my Gmail (it is tied to the older mac.com account). I've managed to reset the password, but I must answer a security question to log in. I mean, I answered t…

Add and verify another primary email address.

On a device: Settings > (iCloud user) > Sign-in & Security -> (+) {{name}}@gmail.com

If that doesn't work, then use the dot trick.. y.ourname@gmail.com = yourname@gmail.com.

Re: Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

#34

Post by geekologist »

sho wrote: post #23

Wow. This is a cautionary tale. I don't think I'd be as devastated as this poor chap, but as it grew I realize I've allowed my iCloud photo library to become a single copy. How are people handling this these days? If i wanted to ensure a full backup of everything on my iCloud to a NAS, what's the best way these days? Seems like they make it difficult by design..

immich is an extremely polished, FOSS alternative to google/apple photos. It's an investment, but a 4 bay NAS running immich should do nicely. Additionally I backup snapshots to Backblaze B2 via restic which runs another $5/TB

Re: Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

#35

Post by geekologist »

baby wrote: post #7

If Apple engineers read this: I can't sign in into my iCloud account from my android phone, it just doesn't work, meaning I can't manage my subscription like HBO now that I switched to an android phone. PS: My plan is to wait for Apple to release a folding iPhone to move back!

That reads as rewarding them for taking your account hostage

Re: Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

#36

Post by yardstick »

sho wrote: post #23

Wow. This is a cautionary tale. I don't think I'd be as devastated as this poor chap, but as it grew I realize I've allowed my iCloud photo library to become a single copy. How are people handling this these days? If i wanted to ensure a full backup of everything on my iCloud to a NAS, what's the best way these days? Seems like they make it difficult by design..

I run a Synology NAS with a docker container that periodically downloads new iCloud Photos to a local directory.

Re: Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

#37

Post by [deleted] »

sho wrote: post #23

Wow. This is a cautionary tale. I don't think I'd be as devastated as this poor chap, but as it grew I realize I've allowed my iCloud photo library to become a single copy. How are people handling this these days? If i wanted to ensure a full backup of everything on my iCloud to a NAS, what's the best way these days? Seems like they make it difficult by design..

[deleted]

Re: Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

#38

Post by mh- »

sho wrote: post #31
mhammerc wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run Arq Backup automatically in the background. It copy Photos, iCloud files and my mails once every days to S3 with incremental backups. It requires to have a full copy locally. Works great! It is not hard to configure once, with the proper folders and settings.

> It requires to have a full copy locally. yeah that's the thing. When my iPhotos library exceeded 1TB I lost the ability to store the full local copies. Since then, iCloud itself has been the sole source. Looks like there's some decent, reasonably priced apps to handle this like https://apps.apple.com/us/app/parachute-backup/id6748614170?... (no affiliation)

Thanks, I have the same problem and need to do something about it.

I wonder if it can calculate (estimate) how big of an external disk I'll need. My wife and I each have 40-50k photos and a few thousand videos in iCloud Photos.

Re: Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

#40

Post by leoxiong »

sho wrote: post #31
mhammerc wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run Arq Backup automatically in the background. It copy Photos, iCloud files and my mails once every days to S3 with incremental backups. It requires to have a full copy locally. Works great! It is not hard to configure once, with the proper folders and settings.

> It requires to have a full copy locally. yeah that's the thing. When my iPhotos library exceeded 1TB I lost the ability to store the full local copies. Since then, iCloud itself has been the sole source. Looks like there's some decent, reasonably priced apps to handle this like https://apps.apple.com/us/app/parachute-backup/id6748614170?... (no affiliation)

You can request an archive of all your data (including photos and drive) in 25gb chunks.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102208

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